Insolent & Insufferable (Rávamë's Bane Companion Fic)
by RealityWarp
Summary: A series of Rávamë's Bane oneshots and vignettes told in no particular order from multiple points of view throughout the story - including Legolas, Gandalf, Aragorn, Gimli, Boromir, Elrond, and Merileth. [Warning: here there be spoilers for RB Books 1 and 2]
1. Book 1 : Chapter 8 (Legolas POV)

**22 / 7 /16 ~ In which Legolas encounters a small, barb-tonged, insolent, green-eyed monster in a dress.**

 **Disclaimer:** _"The Lord of the Rings" is the property of J. R. R. Tolkien. I only claim ownership over Eleanor Dace, Rávamë (aka. "Tink"), and the subsequent plot of their story._

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 **A/N: Ok, I won't lie, I've been dying to write this scene from Prince Charming's POV for ages now. A ton of people have been asking me what he thinks of Ellie when they first meet, and why he acts the way he does, so maybe this will give you a little bit of insight. ;)**

 **Enjoy!**

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 **A Green Eyed Monster**

Book 1 : Chapter 8.1

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Legolas Thranduilion wanted nothing more than to develop sudden, spontaneous, and irreversible deafness.

Indeed, crude as it sounded, he wondered briefly what is must be like to be an old mortal man, blessed with the ability to convincingly feign a lack of hearing to avoid irritating conversations. Or, perhaps, what it would be like to be void of the perception of sound all together, relieving any of the ability to even try and talk to him.

Bliss, he thought grimly. It would be sheer, glorious bliss.

"I must say, your highness," he heard for what had to have been the hundredth time in less than an hour, this time from a droning Lorien elf ambassador sitting on his left. "It is very much a surprise to see you here. I would have thought Lord Thranduil would not have wished to send an emissary of such importance to him as, ah, his _only son._ "

Legolas tried very hard not to grit his teeth. Though at the rate he was going, the other Elves present might actually be in danger of hearing his jaw bones creaking together.

Truly, if he had an acorn for every time he had heard those words since arriving in Lord Elrond's house but a few hours ago, he could have re-planted Mirkwood thrice over. However, instead of scowling and rolling his eyes skyward like an irritated elfling — much as he wished he could still get away with it — he smiled politely at the simpering emissary from Lothlórien sitting beside him.

"Is the matter of one of the Enemy's greatest weapons resurfacing not dire enough to merit my father's personal interest in the issue?" he asked simply, with barely contained annoyance.

The Lórien emissary looked momentarily baffled by the question, but had the decency to turn a bit pink and mutter out an acceptance of the point. Legolas turned away, silently praying to any of the Valar who would listen for the other Elf not to try and converse with him again.

Instead he chose to focus his attention on the whole reason they were all there to begin with, Elves, Dwarves, and Men alike. Well, just one of the many reasons, truthfully.

Every race of the free realms had heard through their various channels that a great weapon of the Enemy — potentially the greatest of any discovered — had been unearthed at last, and by a Halfling, no less. The dark-haired Hobbit in question was perched on the edge of a seat just three chairs to Legolas' right, the small figure's large, hair-covered feet dangling high off the floor. He was glancing nervously around the crowded, open-air Council hall like a spooked hare with wide, sky coloured eyes, looking very uncertain about how exactly he had got there.

The more he looked at the twitchy looking Hobbit, the more Legolas struggled to believe that such a powerful weapon could have fallen so easily into the hands of such a small and helpless looking person.

Then again, he knew from experience that the most dangerous of things often came in small and unimposing wrappings.

Beside the Hobbit sat a face Legolas was a little more familiar with, though only from several decades prior; back when he had gotten a company of Dwarves into rather a lot of trouble with his father, Thranduil, the Men of the now destroyed Laketown, and a particularly gold-hungry dragon sleeping under a mountain.

Gandalf the Grey — or as the Elves more commonly referred to him, _Mithrandir_ ** _*_** — was conversing quietly with Lord Elrond, who, in turn, was beginning to look steadily more impatient as the minutes ticked by. The meeting should have begun at least fifteen minutes ago, and the pressure building in the hall was only growing with every passing second. Whomever Lord Elrond was insisting they all wait upon, besides his own absentee apprentice, it seemed their presence was going to be of at least some significance.

If only they would actually deign to show up, Legolas thought irritably, still attempting to avoid eye contact with any of his talkative kin.

On the opposing side of the semicircle of chairs in the open air Council hall, seated with the emissaries of Men, Aragorn was leaned forwards his elbows resting on his knees, looking lost somewhere in the maze of his own thoughts. He appeared more stoic and troubled than ever before — which was something of an achievement considering how long he and Legolas had had to learn to each other's most minute expressions. Given any other occasion, Legolas and he would have likely gone to sit together, and the Elf would have already been asking the nagging question of what it was that troubled his friend so much.

Alas, as an emissary of Mirkwood, it was his duty to sit amongst his own kin. And in turn, suffer the endless diplomatic small talk that came with them while they waited.

One of the taller Elves, who had been standing and conversing with the other emissaries, suddenly swept towards him in a blur of golden hair, dropping elegantly into the chair on his right.

"Legolas," the familiar, somewhat regal voice of Glorfindel jarred him rudely out of his brooding. "I was unaware it was you who would be here as the representative. It had been too long since I last had cause to visit the Woodland realm. How fares your father?"

Stars, that question was truly getting tiresome.

What Legolas would have given right then to have someone — _anyone —_ to speak with who neither knew, nor cared, who he really was.

"The same as he has ever been," Legolas answered with just enough of a false smile to pass as polite. His face was starting to ache from wearing it so much, but for Glorfindel, he would endure it. "He has become even more troubled lately. The current dangers continue to grow with each passing month, even within our own borders."

Glorfindel gave him a prying look that said he knew Legolas was avoiding the point, golden eyebrows pinched over sharp, icy blue eyes.

"Yet he chose to send his own heir as emissary in the stead of a messenger, despite the danger?" he asked, the tiniest dash of patronising scepticism leaking into his tone.

Legolas decided that his temper could only stretch so far, and that it was probably safer for everyone in the room to pretend the insultingly probing question was rhetorical. Age-long friend of his family or not, he had absolutely no desire or patience left to tell Glorfindel that it had not been his father's decision at all for him to travel to Imladris. Or explain the particulars of why he, the King's only son, had pushed so hard to come as a representative instead of a court appointed ambassador.

Glorfindel had just opened his mouth to continue talking when, at long last, the last two figures they had all been waiting on entered the Council hall. Immediately, everyone's attention was drawn to the pair, and Legolas had to suppress a sigh of relief to find he'd been spared from the other Elf lord's polite probing.

When he, too, turned to look at the two figures who had just entered, however, he could do nothing but blink at what he saw. Lord Elrond's new apprentice — who they had all heard of before arriving — was not at all what he had been expecting.

She was small, and surprisingly delicate looking, especially for an adult Elleth. A mere slip of a thing, barely visible beside the human warrior whom she entered with, his considerably larger frame obscuring much of hers from view. Legolas didn't think anyone in the room would have quite believed this to be the Master of Imladris' infamous new student until he addressed her as such after greeting the man at her side, a faint note of disapproval at their lateness. The mortal man — Lord Boromir of Gondor, as it turned out — looked just as surprised by the revelation, allowing the first proper view of her to the room as he turned to give her a look of genuine shock.

Barely tall enough to be recognisable as an adult she-Elf, she had wide, fern green eyes, fair skin, and an upturned nose. Her wispy, chestnut hair seemed intent on catching the mild breeze even though it was mostly tied back in a loose braid, and she had an insolent little quirk to her lip that dimpled her left cheek. She was not exactly beautiful, at least not in the same way that Lady Arwen was, who was already seated to the right of her father. Even so, there was still something strangely pleasing about the shape of her face, and the tilt of her intelligent green eyes.

She gave the man beside her a sheepish little rise and fall of a shoulder, along with a knowing smile, and it instantly transformed her face from merely pleasant to lovely.

Beside him, Glorfindel had begun sending her what Legolas could only describe as a look of extreme disapproval since the moment she had entered the room, eyes narrowed and lips thinned. The apprentice caught the Elf lord's unfriendly stare after a second, and her small smile vanished. Her warm expression replaced itself with carful neutrality, and she quickly looked away, but Legolas saw the wary dislike there before she could mask it.

Strange, he thought, glancing between her and his family's oldest friend.

Avoiding the eyes of everyone else present — especially Glorfindel's — she took her seat to the left of her master, and Legolas momentarily wondered whether her legs were long enough to reach the floor beneath her long blue dress.

"Strangers from distant lands, friends of old, you've been summoned here to answer the threat of Mordor," Lord Elrond's stern, commanding voice echoed through the room as they all fell silent. "Middle Earth stands upon the brink of destruction, none can escape it. You will unite or you will fall. Each race here is bound to this fate, this one doom."

Lord Elrond, along with every other face else in the room, turned to gaze at the Hobbit, who was perched on his seat beside Gandalf and still looking more than a little uneasy about being there.

"Bring forth the Ring, Frodo."

For a brief moment, Legolas was a little concerned the Hafling was going to trip over his own large feet as he reluctantly slid from the chair and walked nervously up to the small stone plinth that had been erected in the centre of the room. He took something small and gold out of the pocket of his waistcoat and gingerly set it in the centre of the surface, before stepping hesitantly back towards his place beside the Wizard.

All eyes fell upon the tiny glinting object he had left displayed before them all.

A single, harmless-looking, gold ring.

"So it is true," Boromir murmured near-silently as everyone in the room fell into hushed mutters at the sight of the little trinket.

It really did look innocent enough — a simple, unadorned gold band, rather small in size for a man, but a little too large for a woman's hand. Except it wasn't innocent or harmless at all. Not in the slightest.

None of the famed Rings of Power could _ever_ have been called harmless.

Legolas and his kin were seated several feet from the Ring of Sauron the Deceiver, and yet the second it had left the Halfling's pocket, they had all tensed in their chairs. Some had even recoiled slightly. It felt as if the air had grown heavy and thick with smog, and near-silent echoes of a harsh voice emanating from the little band. Even if it hadn't been placed in the centre of Lord Elrond's council hall, Legolas would have known immediately what it was. Any of the Elves there would have.

Across the room Legolas spotted Aragorn — who had also clearly felt the strong presence the Ring was giving off — watching Boromir wearily out of the corner of his eye. The other Man had not lifted his own gaze from the Ring, and something about the way the he was studying it so intently made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. He recognised that look, though it turned his stomach to admit it. He knew it well, because seen it in his own father's face, once upon a time.

Greed. The hunger to possess, and to never relinquish that possession, even if it cost others their lives.

No one spoke as Boromir slowly rose out of his chair, seemingly unaware he had done so.

"I had a dream," he said dazedly, as if only half awake right there and then. "I saw the Eastern sky grow dark. But in the West a pale light lingered. It was crying, doom is near at hand, Isildur's bane is found. Isildur's bane…"

The mortal man's hand drifted out from his side as he moved forward, reaching as if drawn by an unseen force towards the Ring. Legolas felt his instincts scream in warning, the sickening feeling rolling from the Ring redoubling in strength. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Aragorn tense too, the both of them instantly ready to leap from their seat. He saw Lord Elrond's apprentice's fern-coloured eyes widen, her knuckles turning white on the armrests of her chair.

"Boromir!" Lord Elrond thundered, out of his seat before anyone else could react, but it was Gandalf who repelled the Man from the Weapon.

Sound had always held a different meaning to Elves than it did to Men. All Elven senses were naturally sharper than any mortals to be sure, but it went deeper than just that. Sound, language, and speech had been what distinguished them from all Eru Illuvatar's creations before them, when they had first awoken in the East at the dawn of the world. They had been named the Quendi for the trait, literally _"those who speak"_. Their languages were what made them who they were, and after thousands of years of separating into different clans and kingdoms, the beauty and power of spoken words still held a precious place in all of their cultures.

So it was no small shock for every Elf in the room when Gandalf rose like a storm from his chair, and shook the walls of the hall with the scraping sound of the Black Speech of Mordor at full volume.

Legolas had only heard Black Speech once before in his life — decades before, halfway up the side of a mountain, and coming from a hideous Orc warrior intent on taking his head off with a jagged straight sword. Back then, it had sounded guttural and harsh enough to set his teeth and bones on edge, even over the howl of a freezing mountain gale that had blasted all around them. Coming from Gandalf — an infinitely more powerful being only masquerading as an old man — it was enough to darken the entire room, thicken and freeze the air, and shake leaves and dust and from the nearby trees.

 _"Ash nazg durbatulûk,_

 _Ash nazg gimbatul,_

 _Ash nazg thrakatulûk,_

 _Agh burzum-ishi krimpatul."_ ** _**_**

Those few words felt like nails being dragged across roughened stone, the scent of rotting flesh, and the taste of soured milk all rolled together, made into sound, and then poured directly into Legolas' ears, tearing through his head.

His stomach roiled and bile rose in the back of his throat. It was a hellish noise, loud and coming from everywhere, and terrible even without fully understanding the words themselves. The room roiled with the storm of noise, and if Gandalf had gone on a moment longer, Legolas was sure that he and every other Elf in the room — and possibly some of the Men too — would have doubled over. One of those Men, Legolas was more than a little relieved to see, was Boromir. He'd backed away from the stone plinth and the Ring in alarm the second Gandalf had opened his mouth. Though he hadn't quite fallen backwards into his chair as Legolas had hoped, he had gone deathly white-faced, and looked as if he was having to work hard to remain upright.

"Jesus Christ!" a quiet, unfamiliar female voice rasped almost silently.

The words themselves were unfamiliar, but Legolas recognised a curse when he heard one.

He looked up from his own churning nausea to find Lord Elrond's apprentice hunched over herself, boneless in her chair. Her face had drained of colour, her wide eyes still slightly unfocused — flecks of gold in the green seeming to stand out more vividly than before. She was rasping in shallow little gulps of air, and looking very much as if she was trying to resist being sick onto the polished stone floor.

On that feeling, they were both in complete agreement.

Lord Elrond rounded on the wizard with nothing short of triple-distilled fury in his normally serene face.

"Never before has any voice uttered the words of that tongue here in Imladris!" he all but growled.

"I do not ask your pardon, Master Elrond," Gandalf replied, looking rather ill himself, but utterly unrepentant as he leaned heavily on his staff. "For the Black Speech of Mordor may yet be heard in every corner of the West! The Ring is altogether Evil!"

"It is a gift!" Boromir had found his voice again, louder this time, the expression on his face taking on a tinge of dangerous hunger as he stepped forward. Legolas felt his eyes narrow at the man as he watched him stride with renewed fervour before the others — never directly approaching the Ring, but very noticeably putting himself between it and the other races. "A gift to the foes of Mordor! Why not use this Ring? Long has my father, the Steward of Gondor, held the forces of Mordor at bay, by the blood of our people your lands are kept safe! Give Gondor the weapon of the enemy! Let us use it against him!"

Legolas managed to keep the scorn he felt off his face, but only just. He did not begrudge the mortal Men present their voice in deciding their fate, or wish to belittle their struggles defending themselves from Mordor's close proximity. Gondor, after all, was very literally right on the enemy's doorstep. Yet it was also plain to anyone present, even the grim-faced Dwarves watching, that the Man grandstanding before them now had none but his own race's wellbeing at heart.

No. Legolas knew in his bones looking at him, that if this man ever got his hands on the Ring of Power sitting not six feet away from them, it would destroy him.

It would destroy them all. No matter how pure his intentions were.

Before he could voice any of these thoughts, however, a familiar voice from the other side of the room sliced through the uneasy silence Boromir had left.

"You cannot wield it, none of us can," Aragorn's voice resonated around the room, and although Legolas' old friend did not raise his voice in the slightest, everyone in the room turned to look at him.

Everyone except Gandalf, Legolas noticed out of the corner of his eye. He was looking not at Boromir or Aragorn, but at Lord Elrond's apprentice, his eyes narrowed at her as if he'd just seen something that had deeply unsettled him.

"The One Ring answers to Sauron alone," Aragorn went on, still keeping his expression and tone carefully neutral. "It has no other master."

The hungry gleam in Boromir's eyes twisted into a haughty sneer down at the weather-beaten man who'd just addressed him.

"And what would a Ranger know of this matter?" he snapped, obviously not expecting an answer.

He got one regardless.

Irritation and impatience finally getting the better of him, Legolas was out of his seat before the superior, auburn-haired emissary had a chance to turn away — or stick his nose any higher into the air than it already was.

"This," Legolas told the man harshly, fixing him with an unfriendly stare, "is no mere Ranger. This is Aragorn, son of Arathorn. You owe him your allegiance."

Boromir's eyes widened, and behind him, Legolas saw Aragorn's face twitch in what he knew would have been an internal wince.

A momentary twinge of regret rose inside him for forcing his friend so bluntly into the limelight, and in front of so many strangers. In all the many years they had known each other — since the Ranger had been barely an adolescent — Aragorn had never once taken public pride in his true title or heritage. If anything, as a younger man he had behaved as if it were a rather embarrassing family secret, like an uncomfortable childhood story told at dinner parties. As he'd grown older, however, it had turned from a distant knowledge of the future, into a constantly present burden he'd preferred to carry in silence.

It was a sentiment Legolas could empathise with a great deal more than most, thanks to his own weighty heritage and the unwanted title that had come with it.

However, that twinge of guilt at announcing his own friend's prestigious bloodline quickly vanished when Boromir turned back to look at Aragorn with renewed disbelief, as if only just seeing him for the first time.

"Aragorn? _This_ is Isildur's heir?" he said, as if asking himself more than anyone else.

"And heir to the throne of Gondor," Legolas added pointedly, his eyes still narrowed on the Gondorian warrior standing opposite him. Behind Boromir, Aragorn winced invisibly again, and pinched his eyes with one hand.

 _"Sit down, Legolas,"_ he spoke quietly in fluent Sindarin, shaking his head minutely, and leaving the final word unspoken despite the Elf seeing it in his face.

 _'Please.'_

Legolas felt that twinge of guilt again at the words, deliberately spoken in a language most of the other Men wouldn't understand. However, neither Boromir nor Legolas retreated back to their seats immediately. Instead, Boromir had turned his snide glare from Aragorn to the Elf staring him down. Legolas had instinctively opened his mouth to speak again, possibly with more venom than before, but decided against it the second he saw the look on his mortal friend's face.

To anyone else, the look in Aragorn's storm cloud grey eyes might have looked coldly indifferent, but Legolas had seen that look far too often over the years to be fooled anymore. It was a silent warning, and a plea that now was not the time to be antagonistic.

So he relented, reluctantly closing his mouth, and smoothing his silently angry expression back into neutrality as he took his seat again.

Then suddenly, he inexplicably felt someone else's unfamiliar gaze upon him.

Turning his head slightly as he sat, he glimpsed Lord Elrond's apprentice looking between him and Aragorn with her sharp green eyes. She didn't look shellshocked anymore, though she was still a little pale. A minute twitch had quirked the corner of her lip into a tiny smirk, and Legolas found himself both baffled, irked, and bizarrely curious to know what in the world it was she'd found so amusing about them.

Boromir, however, continued to glare at him with the distinct, ugly expression of superiority.

"Gondor has no king," he murmured so quietly most could not have heard him, turning his unpleasant sneer back on Aragorn. "Gondor _needs_ no king."

Boromir took his seat again, but Legolas — and from the deliberately averted look on his face, Aragorn too — could still feel the stung pride and hostility roiling off him like heat haze.

"Aragorn is right, we cannot use it," Gandalf intoned firmly once Boromir was well and truly back in his place, and Elrond nodded once in agreement, rising out of his chair to stand before anyone else could try and interrupt.

"Then you have only one choice then. The ring must be destroyed."

"Then what are we waiting for?" one of the Dwarves emissaries who hadn't yet spoke — a stout, burly warrior with an enormous, red beard — cried suddenly in a harsh baritone. A few of the Men and Elves actually jumped at the sudden noise, but that was nothing compared to what they got next. Before anyone could stop him, the Dwarf was out of his seat, and swinging the business end of a double-bladed battle axe almost as tall as he was down at the Ring.

The blade exploded in a crack of splintering wood and seared metal.

Legolas, and Glorfindel beside him, ducked just in time to avoid being struck in the head with flying pieces of the Dwarf's axe as it shattered in all directions. A high, female cry of sudden pain emanated from Lord Elrond's left, and it was only when he looked up again that Legolas realised it had come from the apprentice. She'd clamped her small hands over where a piece of flying handle had struck her square in face, her face contorted in pain.

"What sorcery is this that shatters dwarven steel like glass?" the Dwarf roared from where he'd been thrown unceremoniously backward into a sprawl on the floor.

"You really thought hitting one of the damned Rings of Power with an axe was actually going to work?!" that same female voice Legolas had heard cry out in pain barked furiously, her high soprano echoing like a bell through the hall and surrounding grounds.

A stunned silence fell over the entire room.

Every Man, Dwarf and Elf in the Council hall instantly turned to land on the she-Elf that had just spoken so viciously, still seated beside her master and clutching her nose in pain. It was only when she lowered her hand from her face that she realised that everyone in the room was looking at her with mixed expressions of outrage, surprise and scandalised interest. Legolas himself found himself half gaping at her — unsure whether he was impressed or scandalised by what she had just dared to do.

Some of her colour flooded back to her cheeks, clearly realising exactly what she had just said aloud to the entire hall — or rather, what kind of insult she had just bellowed at full volume at a Dwarf lord, in a voice that was shocking powerful for one so small. She wasn't given a chance to say another word however, because the next second, the Dwarf who's axe handle had nearly broken her nose was back on his feet, glaring furiously at her through a forest of bristly red hair.

"And who are you to speak out like that to any of us here, _girl_?" he snarled, injecting more venom than was entirely necessary into that final, deliberately demeaning word, and Legolas assumed he'd been embarrassed more by being knocked to the floor than by the she-Elf's barbed words.

The apprentice's face coloured even more, her cheeks turning apple red, and her lips twisted into an angry snarl of her own. She'd opened her mouth to respond, but her master cut her off as swiftly as Gandalf had Boromir but moments before.

" _Élanor_ is a ward of my house, and my apprentice," he told the Dwarf sternly, though the look of disapprove he sent his student was infinitely harsher. "And though you'll have to forgive her forthright manner of speaking, Gimli son of Gloin, she is indeed correct."

 _Élanor?_ Legolas thought with a silent laugh as he observed her with a strange combination of curiosity and mild amusement.

Was that truly her given name? Or some sort of ironic _epessë?_ *******

Whoever this bizarre, tiny Elleth truly was, she was entertaining to watch — but was certainly neither a radiant sun-star, nor a delicate flower, as her name would suggest. From what he had seen of her thus far, she seemed more akin to a small, cute looking creature with deceptively sharp teeth and a penchant for biting off men's fingers.

The outrage hadn't immediately faded from her face as the room returned to normal again, but she had faltered a little under the thunderous gaze of Lord Elrond, reluctantly closing her mouth and sinking back into her seat as her master continued.

"The Ring cannot be destroyed by any craft we here possess. It was made in the fires of Mount Doom, and only there can it be unmade. It must be taken deep into Mordor and cast back into the fiery chasm from whence it came."

He let his piercing gaze sweep one over every one of them in the room, his deep blue eyes lingering for a moment longer on Aragorn. "One of you must do this."

For the second time since the meeting began, a heavy silence fell over the room, and Legolas was reasonably sure that even the nearby birds had gone unnaturally still with the tension of it. Elf or not, you could have heard a pin drop in that room.

"One does not simply walk into Mordor," Boromir murmured in sheer disbelief at the very idea. "Its Black Gates are guarded by more than just orcs. There is evil there that does no sleep. And the Great Eye is ever watchful. It is a barren wasteland, riddled with fire, and ash, and dust. Even the air you breathe is a poisonous fume. Not with ten thousand men could you do this. It is folly!"

Elbareth's mercy, Legolas snarled inside. This Man was going to doom them all.

Frustration boiled up inside him, and before he could think past his own building emotions he was out of his seat once again, his neutral mask entirely gone this time.

"Have you heard nothing Lord Elrond has said?" he bit out furiously. "The Ring _must_ be destroyed!"

"And I suppose you think you're the one to do it?" the same red-haired Dwarf that had been knocked onto his backside barked furiously, leaping to his feet in challenge as well.

"And if we fail, what then?" Boromir bellowed at them both, out of his chair and jabbing a finger at the pair of them accusingly. "What happens when Sauron takes back what is his?!"

"I will be dead before I see the Ring in the hands of an Elf!" the Dwarf roared.

That did it.

The room around him erupted into a cacophony of shouting, pointing, and sheer chaos. Shouts, curses, jeers, taunts, and accusingly jabbed fingers — everything shy of furniture and punches was suddenly being thrown between everyone present. Most of what was actually being yelled thunderously between the three races present was too loud and too jumbled for Legolas to make out. At one point, he actually had to throw out an arm amidst the mayhem to keep the simpering Lorien ambassador from lunging at one the enraged Dwarf emissaries, who was shaking an enormous, hairy fist at them.

Out of his peripherals, as he held back his incensed kinsman, Legolas saw Lord Elrond pinching the bridge of his nose, and speaking very quietly to his apprentice. She was watching the fighting with a look of alarm on her face, as if she couldn't quite believe a room full of adult men of all races were capable of behaving like a pack of drunks in a bar brawl.

Then, from the bedlam of outraged yelling and shrieking, a small, clear voice cut through the noise surer than any knife ever could have.

"I will take it! I will take it! I will take the Ring to Mordor!" Frodo Baggins yelled into the mayhem. The room fell abruptly silent again, startled to silence for the second time in as many minutes, as they all stopped and looked at the tiny, agitated Halfling. He looked startled to find himself on his feet, and hesitated nervously, peering around at them all before saying very quietly, "Although… I do not know the way."

Not a single person, it seemed, knew how to react to that. No one, of course, except for Gandalf.

Amidst the shocked silence, he rose out of his chair and moved to stand beside the little hobbit, resting a steadying hand on his small shoulder that barely came up to the Wizard's belt. "I will help you bear this burden, Frodo Baggins, as long as it is yours to bear," he said firmly, his blue eyes twinkling behind his thick, grey beard and bushy eyebrows.

Legolas, as well as the others, were still so busy recovering from the shock of the Hobbit offering to take on such a perilous task that no one noticed Aragorn had come to a stand himself.

"By my life or death, if I can protect you, I will," he spoke, far more solemnly than Gandalf had, but the same glimmer of determination in his eyes, too. Without hesitation, he strode over and knelt so he was level with the startled but relieved looking Halfling. "You have my sword."

Before Aragorn had even finished rising back to his feet again, Legolas had made his decision.

Taking one last look at the startled faces of his kinsmen, he stepped away from them without a backwards glance.

"And you have my bow," he said, offering the Halfling, Man, and Wizard the first genuine smile he'd worn since entering the hall. He could feel Glorfindel and the other Elven emissaries freeze in shock behind him, but he refused to turn and meet their wide, horror-struck eyes.

"And my axe," the gruff voice of the red-haired Dwarf boomed determinedly from behind him, and Legolas glanced a little sceptically and with narrowed eyes to see the stout warrior come to a stand at his side. The Dwarf, at least, looked equally displeased at the idea of being stood beside the Elf he had just been hurling insults at, glaring openly at him through his thick beard. However, Legolas' attention and dread were both drawn away again as Boromir slowly stepped forward as well.

His eyes flickered between Frodo and the Ring, still set on the plinth between them and their host, but they genuinely warmed as they fell on the Hobbit.

"You carry the fate of us all, little one. If this is indeed the will of this council, then Gondor will see it done," he said clearly, still smiling — and though he sounded as if he truly believed the words he spoke, Legolas couldn't help but see the masked longing still lingering deep in his eyes.

Then, something occurred that truly _none_ of them — not even the serene looking Grey Wizard standing with them — had seen coming.

Beside a still standing Lord Elrond, the small, sharp-tongued, and suddenly very breakable looking she-Elf who had struck the room dumb with her words mere moments before, rose slowly from her seat at his left.

"So will I," she said clearly, though her voice was a little stiff with nerves.

Lord Elrond's eyes widened and his head whipped around to face her so fast, Legolas thought he might have heard his neck joins crack. A few steps to his left, Aragorn went suddenly tense as well, his eyes widening very slightly.

"Élanor, what are you…?" Lord Elrond almost spluttered, momentarily dumbstruck at the sight of her standing. To his credit, nearly everyone in the room was, too — Legolas included, a strange, unfamiliar instinct in him suddenly shouting frantic objections.

Gimli, on the other hand, had no such issues speaking his mind.

"You cannot be serious, girl," he snorted bluntly, using the deliberately demeaning word once again, and cutting off whatever Lord Elrond had been about to say. He aimed a contemptuously amused smile at the Elleth, and her green eyes flicked down to fix on the Dwarf's brown ones. The faintly nervous look she'd worn vanished as swiftly as sun behind a storm cloud, and she raised her chin a little higher, glaring haughtily down at the Dwarf before her.

"Actually, I'm perfectly serious," she answered primly, though Legolas noticed her fists were clenched tightly at her sides.

However well she hid it from the rest of them, it was obvious to him that she was fighting down uncertainty and doubt in herself, and at what she could offer. He knew it, recognised it so swiftly, because it was a feeling he had experienced all too when only a few centuries before.

That bizarre, silent panic that had appeared in his chest at the sight of her suddenly standing up howled inside him again. Legolas felt his face contort into a frown at the feel of it, but he forced himself to ignore it.

"The dwarf is right," he heard himself speak before realising his mouth had even opened to speak. He felt more than saw the startled looks both the apprentice and the Dwarf gave him at those words, but instead he looked directly at Lord Elrond, silently hoping that the Lord of Rivendell would recover from his shock and stop his student from making the potentially mortal mistake she was trying to. "She is no warrior. She cannot have the experience or the capability of defending herself should we face danger along the way."

"I'm still _here_ you know!" she snapped at him indignantly.

For the briefest of seconds, those words reminded Legolas painfully of Tauriel. She, too, had been one of the few to speak to him with such gall — even grimacing, rolling her eyes, and irritably snapping at him when he had last poked fun at her for having a Dwarven admirer.

The pain of remembering his old, banished friend he had not seen in almost half a century must have shown on his face, because he saw a little of the colour leave the apprentice's face as he finally turned his gaze upon her. Yet, she did not falter, or look away. She glared up at him frostily, a silent storm brewing behind that outraged look in her eyes. Even her expression and adamant stance reminded him momentarily of his old friend, though the effect was a little spoiled by the darkening bruise that had formed on the bridge of her upturned nose. That piece of axe handle must have truly struck her hard — a feat that only seemed to highlight to him again exactly how fragile she really was.

Elbareth's mercy, she looked as if a strong wind might actually knock her over.

"You'd be a liability," he said stonily, the unexpectedly strong surge of frustration making his voice far colder than he'd intended.

The tiny Elleth's fern coloured eyes flared with barely controlled anger as she glared up at him, the top of her chestnut head barely making it to level with his chin. He didn't have to strain at all to see Lord Elrond's look of exasperation over the top of her head. Strangely though, the Lord of Rivendell did not seem at all surprised by his apprentice's actions. If anything, it seemed almost as if he'd been expecting — or perhaps dreading — her doing something exactly like this.

"Liability suggests uselessness," she said to him, her voice as cold as his own had been. "And I wouldn't be useless to you."

"Oh? And what kind of useful purpose is it you are suggesting then, _lassie_?" Gimli asked sarcastically, emphasising the word as if it were a foul insult. No one around them dared speak up in defence of either party as the apprentice opened her mouth again to retort. She was interrupted, however, by the only person in that room who — if Legolas were forced to be honest — had any true right to voice their opinion on her joining them.

"I remember you," Frodo spoke up, looking at her with earnest curiosity, as if he were trying to remember her from somewhere a long time ago. "You were there when I was being healed, and while I was recovering. You helped treat me."

Her face softened as she turned to look down at him. Barring the Dwarves, he was the only one present who was smaller than she was, and Legolas — perhaps a little uncharitably — thought they both looked as if they could be equals in terms of physical strength and combat skills.

"I… yeah, I was. Though, mostly, that was Master Elrond's work. He took the Morgul splinter out of you," she murmured, glancing sideways at her master as her cheeks coloured. Lord Elrond said nothing, his face gone blank as she continued, the determination returning to her face as she spoke only to the Hobbit. "It's true, I am not a warrior, Mr. Baggins. But I've dealt with most injuries before. Broken bones, lacerations, concussions, burns. I can treat your wounds and stitch you back together as well as I can stitch up any clothes that need mending. If you'll allow me to join you, I will do my best to keep you, and everyone who follows you, in one piece."

Her sharp green gaze suddenly met Legolas' again, and she added with haughty little tilt of her chin, "Maybe two pieces."

He blinked at her.

Had she…

Had she truly just threatened to return him home in _multiple pieces?_

Another unexpected rush of irrationally strong anger surged up inside of him, eclipsing his confused surprise as he glared down at her. She didn't so much as blink, and he couldn't tell which surprised him more: the sheer strength of the emotion she'd just invoked with only a few words, or the fact that she did not seem the slightest bit intimidated by his reaction anymore. She returned his glare frostily, as if she owned the ground he stood upon, and another irrational jolt of temper rolled through him.

Stars, what was _wrong_ with him?

"I believe she should be allowed to join us," Gandalf's voice interrupted the tension-fraught silence, and he sounded suspiciously pleased at the idea. He was even smiling slightly, a twinkle in his bright blue eyes as Aragorn, Legolas, and several others turned perplexed looks upon him. He made a sweeping gesture towards the apprentice, eyeing them all pointedly. "We can carry all the bandages and antidotes we wish, but that would be no substitute for a trained healer. And bar Lord Elrond himself, I doubt you could hope to find one present and willing with a steadier hand and a calmer head than his own apprentice."

A half pleased, half uneasy look adorned her face, the shadow of her previous uncertainty reappearing, and Legolas frowned at the sight. For some reason he couldn't fathom, the stubbornness of her attitude and words had _incensed_ him beyond reason, and he simply could not understand for the life of him why.

Unable and unwilling to say anything more, despite the inexplicable feeling of objection still roiling inside him, he just narrowed his eyes at her. His frown was nothing compared to Lord Elrond's however, whom Legolas saw was looking at his student with an expression that mixed everything from exasperation, regret, anger, and faint panic down to genuine worry.

He was looking at her as a father might at the sight of one of his children about to teeter over a cliff.

"Here!" a second Hobbit, reddish blond and flushed with excitement, shot suddenly out of one of the nearby hedges faster than his rotund size would suggest he could, skidding to a halt at Frodo's left.

"Mr. Frodo's not going anywhere without me!" he declared, folding his arms over his chest, and Frodo's face broke into an exuberant smile.

"No, indeed not. It seems hardly possible to separate you two, even when he was invited to a secret council and you were not," Lord Elrond commented sardonically, though the corner of his lip had twitched upward in poorly masked amusement. The blond Hobbit blushed scarlet as Lord Elrond and Gandalf both smiled at him.

Then two more voices cried from behind the pillars either side of the entranceway. "Oi! We're coming too!"

Lord Elrond's head whipped around again as two more curly-haired Hobbits — one in a green shirt, the other in a yellow waistcoat — sprinted across the room, coming to a grinning stop on Frodo's other side. "And you'll have to send us home tied up in a sack to stop us!"

"Anyway, you need people of intelligence on this sort of mission, quest… thing," the shorter of the two said with an air of bluffed wisdom. Were he not stood there as a solemn representative of his people, and still trying to tame the unfamiliarly strong sensation of anger roiling inside him, Legolas might have allowed himself a smile, maybe even a chuckle. Lord Elrond's apprentice however, did laugh. She tried to smother it, but the giggle slipped out before she could cover it, and the smaller Hobbit grinned up at her, obviously very pleased with himself at the achievement.

The merry look left her swiftly however when she looked up and found her master looking at her once again. Though this time there was no disproval or exasperation left — only weariness, and poorly masked sorrow.

As if he knew he was dooming her to something she could not yet see, but could do nothing to stop it.

"If this is truly your choice, apprentice, then I will not stop you," he said, so quietly Legolas was only able to hear because he was standing less than four feet from them. Then, before his student could wipe the confused and saddened look from her face, he stepped back to regard them all.

"Ten companions?" he murmured quietly, as if to himself than to them. "So be it. You shall be the Fellowship of the Ring."

All the Hobbits along with Gandalf all beamed at those words, the smallest Hobbit piping up enthusiastically once more.

"Right!" he grinned, then looked up and around at them all curiously. "Where are we going?"

 **~ Ω ~**

A mere half hour after the Council had adjourned, those present — including all ten members of the newly minted Fellowship of the Ring — had dispersed to begin immediate preparations for their journey.

Their departure would not happen for at least another week, given the time it would take for supplies and provisions to be gathered and packed suitably for travelling on foot. However, the second the meeting ended, Legolas had rather wished that they'd been able to leave immediately, poor an idea as that would have been.

He had immediately been swarmed by his fellow kinsmen the second Gandalf, Frodo, and Lord Elrond exited the room, taking Arwen and the apprentice with him. Legolas had been left behind in the hall, only to be bombarded with an assault of questions, horrified looks, and shocked exclamations at his impulsive — read: foolhardy — decision to join the other nine companions on their journey to Mordor.

Most of the barrage of questions he deliberately ignored or deflected before he finally managed to detach himself from their midst. He'd given Aragorn a silent nod as he passed — an unspoken promise that they would talk later, when Aragorn too had escaped his own entourage of unwanted attention — and fled the room.

Only one of Legolas' shellshocked kinsmen had dared follow him from the hall.

"What in Elbareth's name came over you?" Glorfindel was demanding, gesturing sweepingly with one arm as he took long strides to keep up with Legolas' deliberately swift ones. He would never be able to out-walk the older, taller Ellon beside him, but he could damn well try.

"Perhaps a sudden, irrepressible urge to assist in destroying a dreaded weapon of the Enemy, instead of shying away and simply watching from afar?" he answered bitterly.

Glorfindel scoffed, unfazed by his biting tone.

"Do not attempt to deflect me with that feeble excuse you gave the other emissaries. I know you better than that," he snapped back, shaking his head. "What in Arda would you have me tell him when he finds out where you have gone?"

"Tell him whatever you wish. It will change nothing," Legolas answered him bluntly, wishing beyond anything that the Elf lord would simply leave him be for a few minutes. The walk back to his quarters through the open air corridor seemed twice the distance it had been that morning, dragging on for eternity despite Legolas' long legs and purposefully swift strides.

Glorfindel made a noise halfway between a snort and a growl, and a strong, sun-darkened hand suddenly clamped down on Legolas' shoulder, whirling him around to face the other glaring gold-haired Elf lord. Now that Legolas was well and truly an adult, Glorfindel was only a couple of meagre inches taller than he, but he still looked down at him like he was an unruly elfling, caught causing mischief once again.

"Nothing?" he asked sharply, the nearest thing to outright exasperation Legolas had seen on his face since he was a child. "You think that knowing his only son and heir will not be returning home, but instead chose to march towards the darkest lands of Arda in the company of two Men, a Wizard, a Dwarf, a she-Elf, and four Halflings will mean nothing to him? Manwë's breath, Legolas. I doubt that even coming from _me_ Thranduil will be at all impressed to hear news of—"

"My father—" Legolas snapped, his temper flaring with bitterness and sudden pain before he could rein it in. Glorfindel looked slightly startled, and Legolas had to take a deliberately slow breath before daring to speak again. "My father… is rarely impressed or pleased by any news from outside our borders anymore. At the very least, this will provide him with a legitimate reason for his displeasure."

Glorfindel did not drop his expression of almost parental disapproval, but his features did soften a little as he relinquished his hold on the younger Elf's shoulder.

"Outside your borders?" he murmured, more to himself than to Legolas as he shook his head in disbelief. "Elbareth's mercy, he has become yet _more_ reclusive?"

Legolas felt a dull, familiar, age-old ache appear deep in his chest, one that had once, as an elfling, caused him such pain that it had brought tears to his eyes and sobs to his breath. No longer though; he was long past being a child.

Yet it still hurt. Every time. Even now, so many centuries later.

He didn't answer Glorfindel's original question, treating it as if he had not heard it in the first place.

"He can be as displeased as he wishes. I will not cower in a dwindling kingdom in the blind hope that the world will somehow grow less dark on its own. Not anymore," he said very quietly, turning away to look out into the gardens through the corridor's open air arches. Beside him, Glorfindel appeared to have become temporarily lost in his own thoughts — Legolas could all but hear the gears whirring at what he had told him of his father.

Finally, he seemed to resurface, and his expression dwindled to solemn acceptance as he looked at him.

"I suppose your decision is made," Glorfindel asked, despite already knowing the answer. Legolas nodded just once.

"It is."

Glorfindel nodded too, and turned to stare out into the ground as well.

"I will inform him then," he said quietly after a moment, and a small part of Legolas uncoiled in hidden relief. Whatever came next for him, whatever choices he made that his father may or may not resent him for, he was glad that Thranduil would be hearing the news that his only son had decided salvation lay outside the safety of Mirkwood from an old, trusted friend.

One who had known and cared for them both since long before the terrible time his fragile family had gone from three, to just two.

Suddenly desperate to break the heavy silence and banish the unbidden memories creeping back into his mind, Legolas searched his head for something else to speak of. As he did, he happened to look straight down into the courtyard garden below — only to see Lord Elrond's barb-tongued apprentice walking side-by-side and speaking with an elderly, grey-haired Hobbit, whom Legolas recognised instantly to be Bilbo Baggins.

They were talking and laughing excitedly, a genuinely warm and completely relaxed smile on the Elleth's face that he had not seen her wear in the Council hall.

Before he knew what he was saying, Legolas found himself asking the first question that came to him as he looked down at them both. "You have a deep dislike for Lord Elrond's apprentice. Why?"

Glorfindel looked momentarily surprised by the sudden question, but then comprehension dawned on his face as he followed Legolas' gaze down into the courtyard.

"Ah, it is that obvious, is it?" he asked mildly, clicking his tongue. Legolas gave him a flat, sideways look, one eyebrow raised. Glorfindel grimaced, but inclined his head in assent instead.

"You and your damned curiosity, _gornon dithen_ ******** _,_ " he exhaled, the old nickname slipping out by accident as he rubbed his forehead tiredly, looking down at the laughing she-Elf and Hobbit, and shaking his head. "You are indeed correct. I am not fond of Lady Élanor, though I would not wish harm or danger upon her. Least of all the kind of danger you will both soon be journeying towards."

Legolas paused to give him time to continue, and when he didn't, he pressed on.

"It seemed more than a mere lack of fondness."

Glorfindel didn't answer him this time, only continued to look down into the gardens with narrowed eyes. Now it was Legolas' turn to take the other Elf by the shoulder, though his was more to draw his attention than to force it.

"You've known my family for a great many centuries, Glorfindel, and I have never once known you to dislike anyone simply on principle. Even one as… infuriating and brazen as she," he said, choosing his words carefully, trying to ignore the burning sensation that had appeared in his chest again. Instead he gave a small knowing smile in offering, attempting humour he did not quite feel. "Tell me, my friend. What exactly did she _do_ to incur your hard-earned distain?"

Glorfindel pulled a face, half amused and half irritated, as if the memory of something had brought a sour taste to his mouth.

"Beyond her obvious insolence and disregard for common courtesy and respect?" he asked, pointedly avoiding sharing whatever event or conversation he was remembering. Curious as he was, Legolas decided it would be wise not to push his luck too far.

"Beyond that, yes."

The ancient, gold-haired Elf lord did not hurry to answer. Instead, he turned again to look down into the grounds where the she-Elf in question had just been joined by Boromir, and was now clearly in the process of introducing the Man of Gondor to the elderly Hobbit. Bilbo gave the man a surprisingly courtly bow and politely excused himself with a tired smile, leaving the Elf apprentice and mortal warrior to converse alone. Something he said made her smile widen as they watched Bilbo go, and Legolas saw her expression warm even more towards him. Glorfindel's expression, however, darkened as he continued to watch them like a hawk watching a field mouse far below.

"There is something about her that—" he paused, still looking deeply thoughtful and pursing his lips. "Something that unsettles me greatly. It is an uncomfortably familiar sensation. One I have not experienced since before the Fall of Numenor…"

The haunted shadow of a life Glorfindel had once had and lost crept into his eyes. He seemed to age centuries in the space of seconds without a single line appearing on his face, and Legolas waited without a sound for his father's oldest friend to regain himself. He had heard only fragments of what Glorfindel had been through during his long, first lifetime in Arda. Yet Legolas did know enough to understand that the considerably older Elf lord's experiences with war, horror, and death were not something any Elf had the right to disregard or belittle.

When Glorfindel finally did regain his composure again, his blue eyes and cheeks looked strangely sunken, the memories of what he had endured before the ending of his first life taking their toll.

"I fear that you are bringing more danger with you than simply a weapon of the Enemy," he breathed quietly, still able to stare down into the gardens with open suspicion and mistrust in his sunken eyes.

Eyes that had drifted to and fixed upon the Man of Gondor still talking animatedly with the beaming Elleth below.

Legolas did not show exactly how much he really did agree with that statement — even less when that bizarre feeling of irritated anger rolled through him yet again at the sight of her standing so close to the Man's side as they walked.

"Hypothetically, then," he heard himself asking, "were I to ask for it, what would your advice be for the journey ahead?"

Glorfindel looked up from the pair to glance at him, his blue gaze shadowed, but there was also a tiny glimmer of his old amusement lingering there — a tiny, flickering candle burning in a darkened, ruined palace.

He tried to smile, but it appeared brittle on his tired face.

"Were I to believe you would actually _listen_ to my advice, let alone take it, I would advise you to be extra cautious," he chuckled, then his tone turned coldly serious, staring directly at him with growing intensity. "I would also advise you not underestimate the influence of that Ring. Watch for signs of weakness in them all as you journey, and in yourself. Pray it does not come to it, but you should all be ready, should the need to defend Master Frodo against those closest to him arise."

The both of them looked down again at the small form of Lord Elrond's apprentice and the tall mortal she had just bidden good afternoon to — and as if sensing unfriendly eyes upon her, she looked up to see Legolas and Glorfindel staring down at her.

Legolas watched as the warm smile he had thought of as lovely mere hours before fell from her face, replaced by that look of forced neutrality that made her eyes burn cold. Then she turned and strode away.

A pang that was worryingly close to real regret for the way he'd spoken to her in the Council hall stung him, but he shoved that thought down before it could come close to appearing on his face.

"And her?" he asked offhandedly, watching the small figure of Lord Elrond's ward disappearing back into the house.

Glorfindel was eerily silent again for a long moment.

"I would advise you to avoid turning your back to her… no matter how innocent and naive she might appear," he said plainly, before turning away back down the hall, walking slowly away. "I fear that if you do, you might well find yourself with a knife buried in it someday."

* * *

 **Translations:**

 _*_ ** _Mithrandir_** — "Grey Pilgrim" (Sindarin)

 _**_ **_"One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all, And in the darkness bind them."_** — (Black Speech of Mordor)

 _***_ **_epessë_** — an Elven "after name" bestowed during their adult years to reflect distinguishing features or personality traits, more akin to an honorary title than a nickname (eg. Arwen's _epessë_ is _Undómiel_ meaning "evening star.")

 _****_ **_gornon dithen_** — little valiant one (Sindarin)

* * *

 **A/N: Really hope you guys enjoyed that little look into our favourite elf princeling's head, because it was really fun to write. And hopefully if you're a Rávamë's Bane reader it'll give you a little clue into why he acts the way he does… at least to begin with. ;)**

 **Let me know what you think in the reviews! The next chapter of CM is finished and is with my Beta, and should be up before too long.**

 **Until next time, much love,**

 **Rella x**


	2. Book 1 : Chapter 8 (Gandalf POV)

**30 / 9 /16 ~ In which Gandalf asks cryptic questions, and Elrond remembers things who would rather forget.**

 **Disclaimer:** _"The Lord of the Rings" is the property of J. R. R. Tolkien. I only claim ownership over Eleanor Dace, Rávamë (aka "Tink"), and the subsequent plot of their story._

* * *

 **A/N: *** ** _Warning! Here there be spoilers!*_**

 **Well, not really spoilers, but a lot of cryptic clues regarding Ellie's past, and future. What happens when you throw an elf lord and a wizard into the same room and get them talking? They talk in riddles of course. :)**

 **Since we're getting into some dangerous grown here regarding clues, I have only one request for you all —** ** _if you manage to figure out who Ellie really is, please don't give the game away! There are some readers who don't want to be spoiled in the reviews or comments! If you want to let me know you've figured it out, drop me a PM!_**

 **Hope you enjoy. :)**

* * *

 **Only Three Who Live**

Book 1 : Chapter 8.2

* * *

"You know, when you said there was another _small issue_ to discuss besides the Ring, I had no idea you meant small in the poetic sense," Gandalf said in a carefully controlled tone that belied the torrent of emotion he felt.

Lord Elrond closed the door to his study firmly behind them both and turned to look at the Wizard with an uncharacteristically bitter look beneath the usual calm.

"Or the literal sense either, I expect," he said dryly, moving smoothly past him toward the sideboard beneath the window to pour himself a glass from the decanter. After what had just been witnessed in the Council hall, Gandalf suspected they both needed a rather stiff drink — though likely for two very different reasons.

"Poetic or literal, this is most definitely no small issue you have living under your roof, Elrond," Gandalf continued as he walked over to stand beside the Elf lord. The Lord of Rivendell's scowl deepened, darkening his otherwise serene features as he poured a rather large helping of deep amber liquid into a crystal glass for himself, then a second for the wizard.

"Would you have preferred I announce exactly who she is to the entire hall?" he asked nonchalantly, turning to look Gandalf fully in the face with an arched eyebrow. "It would have certainly been enough to curb some of their looser tongues."

Gandalf took the offered glass, but didn't drink from it, his expression almost a wince.

"Or enough to bite them off entirely. Though words would have hardly made a clearer impression than the ones given following the uttering of the Black Speech," he said mildly, though he couldn't help but eye his friend's guarded expression and evasive response to what had just happened. To what he now knew they were really facing.

When Elrond didn't reply, Gandalf let loose a heavy exhale, shaking his head and gesturing with his free hand back towards the door.

"Suns and stars, Elrond, had I only known ahead of time exactly what — _who —_ you were truly harbouring here, I would have—"

"You would have what, Gandalf?" Elrond interrupted, his normally calm voice turning unnaturally sharp and biting for a second, his dark blue eyes filling with repressed frustration as he stared at the old man.

Gandalf stared back at him, feeling his shock creep unbidden into the lines of his face. The Elf lord seemed to take a moment to reign himself back in, pulling in a deep breath and pinching the bridge of his nose. He downed a large gulp of the amber wine, and stared down into the glass for a long moment with vaguely sunken eyes before speaking again.

"I am sorry, old friend. You need not fear offending me, but I cannot imagine there is any opinion you can offer to this dilemma that I have not already considered a hundred times by now," he spoke quietly, turning and dropping somewhat heavily into one of the high-backed chairs facing the open balcony window. He gestured in offering at the seat next to him, and Gandalf took it, setting his untouched glass on the desk as he watched his friend in concern.

"Ask what you would," Elrond said tiredly once the old Wizard was seated beside him. "I have little idea where to begin, and better you know and understand the entire situation now rather than later."

Gandalf paused for a moment to regard the man before him who had been his friend for so many years. He was still regal and elegant as you would expect any Elf lord to be — in his deep purple robes, effortlessly graceful and proud, his long hair pulled back into a flawless tail. But in the throes of his current and obvious distress and hidden pain, Gandalf saw the other half of his heritage beneath had begun to show through.

Shadows and worry lines had come in to mar his usually timeless features, casting his expression into one that looked more haunted by his many years than wise from them. He was immortal, one of the Eldar — and yet in that moment, the old Wizard had never seen his old companion look more ravaged by the merciless, unending nature of time than this.

Leaning forward on his elbows, Gandalf steepled his fingers before him, and considered his thoughts carefully before speaking. Elrond was correct, he did indeed need to understand the situation in its entirety; especially now that their party had more members than originally expected. But that did not mean he wanted to trample over his friend's emotions at such a vulnerable moment.

"How long has she been here?" Gandalf asked very softly after a long moment, looking sideways at Elrond with a gentle gaze.

"Two winters," Elrond answered, still staring blankly down into his glass.

"And how many _know_ of her?"

Elrond paused at that question, taking a moment to nurse another gulp of wine, though a smaller one than before, the Wizard was relieved to see.

"Only three who still live," Elrond answered more strongly, abandoning his half-full glass on a side table and meeting Gandalf's steady look with his own. "Myself, Lady Galadriel, and now yourself."

Gandalf didn't try to mask his surprise, his eyebrows rising. True, he had suspected the number of people left in the world who knew the truth would be few and far between, but still… just three. And three who happened to be the current keepers of the Elven Rings of Power.

Gandalf honestly couldn't decide whether that was fitting, ironic, or deeply unsettling. He looked at his friend with a gaze of equal parts curiosity and worry.

"Then it is true? All knowledge of her, everything that happened back then, it was all erased?"

"Yes," Elrond answered him simply, his tone deliberately void of any feeling.

Gandalf let himself lean back heavily in the chair, digesting that piece of information almost as long as he had the previous.

"She has been gone a long time… She truly remembers nothing?" he murmured, the question originally more of a rhetorical one, but as the words escaped him he realised he genuinely wanted to know.

The young woman he had met in the Sanatorium, and then that day in the Council Hall, had been almost childlike in her innocence; so full of life and light, totally void of the despair that came with life and ages. Did she really not know?

"No," Elrond cut through the old man's musings, seeming to see the train of thought in his eyes and they looked at each other. Then the moment broke, and the Elf lord's hardened gaze faltered, sinking back into one of exhaustion, and what looked almost painfully like grief. "There is nothing left of her life before. She and the Lady Galadriel saw to that."

"I… see," Gandalf said in barely a whisper.

Unusually unsure of what to say in the face of that, the Wizard and Elf both drew their eyes to the open balcony window and its view of the gardens, healing houses, and sprawling mountain forests. Though they could not see down into the courtyard below from their seats, the distant sound of light laughter still made its way up to them both.

Though Gandalf did not know the young woman in question well, there was no one else resident in the halls of Rivendell he could imagine who's laughter could have been so bright and unrestrained.

Except perhaps the four Hobbits, he thought with a fond smile.

The laughter was followed by the sound of companionable chatter, and Gandalf heard the voice of Bilbo join the fray. But while the sound brought an effortless, slightly sad smile to the Wizards face, the Elf lord beside him seemed to go boneless with silent pain at the sounds, closing his eyes and almost curling into himself in his chair.

"I should have stopped her," Elrond whispered, and his voice all but brimmed with long repressed guilt and grief.

Gandalf regarded the Elf lord seriously.

"When?" he asked pointedly, but also curious. "Back when she did this to herself? Or just now during the Council, when she decided to cast herself headfirst into this perilous journey?"

"Both," Elrond answered tightly, his hands clutching on the armrest of the chair until the wood began to creak. "I should have been there to stop her before, to find another way, _any_ other way…"

"You did all you could with the knowledge you had, old friend," the elderly Wizard said very gently, placing his strong but time-worn hand over the Elf lord's considerably younger looking one. "There is no changing what she chose to do."

Elrond seemed to force himself to relax some, but the faraway look did not leave his eyes when he opened them again. When he didn't respond for almost a minute, Gandalf went on, wishing he didn't have to say aloud what he knew they were both thinking…

"She cannot stay here, Elrond. I do not know if her motivations for joining the Fellowship are truly her own, or some remaining subconscious need to distance herself from you all, but she cannot remain for much longer. Especially now that—"

Elrond stood suddenly, his stony expression unchanging, though there was furious fire burning in his dark blue eyes now as he turned away towards the balcony.

"And what will become of us all if she does leave with you?" he demanded in a cold, but carefully controlled voice, going and leaning his hands on the carved edges of the balcony as he looked out. "What if she is mortally wounded, or killed near a settlement, Gandalf? A town? A city? Could you stomach the reality of knowing her blood _and_ the return of the Hravarim are both on your hands?"

Gandalf, slightly stung as he was by the implication, refrained from pointing out that a journey of this secrecy would mean they'd need to avoid cities or settlements at all costs. The danger of her falling close enough to another vessel was slim, and yet…

He sighed, feeling his moment of frustration vanish as he stared down at his own creased and sun-worn hands, his eyes turning sad.

"No, I do not believe I could," he answered honestly, looking up again and standing up to join his friend on the balcony. He came and stood close beside him looking out at the view, almost shoulder to shoulder, despite the torrent of emotions he could feel emanating from the Elf lord in a silent storm. "Yet even if she does stay here, the same will still happen. You must have noticed, it has already begun."

Elrond's quiet discord faltered very slightly as he looked sideways at Gandalf with searching eyes and an almost croaky voice.

"So, you saw—"

"Her eyes, yes," Gandalf interrupted this time, and when he turned to look at Elrond again, his gaze held genuine despair. "I am truly sorry."

For a moment Elrond looked as if he might actually snarl. But his regal Elven features were untuned to the primal expression, so the expression instead turned into a raw looking glare.

"I will not keep her prisoner here," Elrond whispered, low and dangerous in its calm. "But neither will I force her to leave the shelter of Imladris if she changes her mind, Gandalf."

Gandalf regarded him with a somber gaze, not liking himself for what he knew needed saying next.

"Not even at the risk of _that_ power accidentally passing to another? To one of your own house? To Arwen?" he asked softly, without malice or accusation as he saw the look on Elrond's face twist in pain at the very thought of his daughter falling prey to what they knew was coming. "If your apprentice stays here, it will eventually happen, one way or another. You know this."

Elrond's frozen expression went through a bizarre series of emotions all in the space of a few moments — fury, outrage, defiance, agony, denial, guilt, and grief. But most of all of them, and the one he was left with when all the others had burned away, was sorrow.

The slow, bone-deep, soul eroding sorrow that Gandalf knew could only come with a lifetime's worth of loss and longing.

He still held himself tall as always, but the tiniest hunch in his shoulders gave light to his true emotions as he turned and looked down into the courtyard and gardens.

Below them on the grass stood the distinctive forms of both Bilbo and the apprentice in question. They were still talking animatedly as they walked companionably side-by-side through the grounds, but paused when Boromir suddenly approached and introduced himself to the elderly Hobbit with a formal bow. Beside them both, Elrond's ward smiled fondly at the both of them, that bright little spark Gandalf had seen in her face earlier growing until it completely eclipsed her former coldness in the Council hall.

At the sight, Elrond's shoulder's seemed to sag, as if pulled down by an enormous weight.

"I am sending her to her death, Gandalf," he breathed out, his voice a barely audible rasp as he stared down at them beginning to walk away. "Or as good as."

Gandalf's face fell in genuine empathy, reaching up and resting a hand lightly on the other man's shoulder.

"I am so sorry, old friend. I truly would not wish this position upon any, least of all you," he said quietly, unable to offer any other kind of comfort, as much as he wished he could. But the old Wizard knew all too well that this was not the kind of pain that could be cured with words and good intentions.

Elrond continued to stare down into the gardens where his ward and her two companions had stood with a blank expression. The tension and anger had dissipated almost entirely from him now, leaving the Lord of Rivendell apparently his poised and regal self once again…

If you didn't look too closely at what was going on in his hollowed, dark blue eyes.

"She looks so much like Nazrîn. Except when she smiles, and when she laughs, then she looks exactly like—" he murmured softly, then seemed to realise what he was saying and broke off. He swallowed, took a long, deep breath, and raised his head to look up from the ground and out at the mountains. "She's reckless and more cunning than is good for her, but her instincts have always been sound. She will know what to do when the time comes. I will only ask that you watch over her until then. And to… intervene, if it should come to that."

Elrond's voice didn't exactly crack over those last few words, but to anyone who knew him, it was near enough to matter.

"I pray it never will, old friend," Gandalf said gently, his thoughts darkening and carrying him away for a moment at the thought, before another question occurred to him. "Will you tell her any of this, before she leaves?"

Elrond shook his head, and sighed deeply, once again closing his eyes.

"I cannot. _She_ would know immediately, and take steps to ensure her continued survival. We cannot risk that."

Gandalf nodded, idly stroking his beard in contemplation. He could understand that, both the logical reasoning and the merciful want of a loving master to shelter his student as long as he could. It couldn't last forever, this fragile peace she had now — but the longer she did remain ignorant to who and what she truly was, the longer she would be able to keep that brightness in her smile and in her laugh. Untarnished and unshadowed by the weight of the knowledge that was still hidden deep within the vaults of her mind.

The longer she remained ignorant, the longer she would be safe from what was to come.

"You know she will discover the truth eventually. They both will. It is only a matter of time," Gandalf murmured idly, watching as a pair of the Hobbits — Merry and Pippin this time — made their way back into the garden on the far side of the view, their pipes already producing familiar, white puffs of smoke.

"I know," Elrond exhaled heavily again.

But as he did, an unexpected expression crept onto his face — a smile.

It was small, and fragile looking, but also alive with a quietly fierce, bright spark of warmth that, just for a moment, burned through the darkness and hurt. Gandalf had only seen that look appear one other person — on Elrond's ward and apprentice, when she stood up before the Council, and offered her aid to them.

"She lived, you know, before she returned and awoke again," the Lord of Rivendell spoke with a quiet but deeply warm tone, almost proud. "She told me of it the first day she awoke here."

Gandalf looked at him, grey eyebrows raised in genuine surprise.

"Lived?" he repeated, turning the word over until the true meaning of it struck him, and his eyes widened. "It happened, then? She… truly did wander to another world?"

Elrond nodded, and the smile on his face was two parts warm amusement to one part aching sadness.

"She called it 'Earth'," he told the Wizard with a lighter tone to his voice that he hadn't used in a long time. "She said she lived in a city of glass, steel and lights. She had parents, a brother, friends, a life. She started anew, Gandalf, as a mortal. It was quite the tale she told of the world she left behind there. She even attempted to lie about it when first we talked, right to my face. She's more like _him_ that I ever expected."

Again, Elrond's voice didn't falter, but his expression seemed to drift momentarily into deep memories — ones that he either struggled or was reluctant to pull himself from — before continuing.

"She spoke of that world with such joy and longing. Even now, I can see she is still desperate to return to them. If she is anything like she was once, I doubt there is anything she would not do to find a way back."

"If there is, indeed, a way back," Gandalf finished for him with a sad little smile that nonetheless did not mask his wonder and curiosity. He glanced out at where Merry and Pippin were now clearly in the throes of telling inappropriate tales and laughing heartily. "I wonder, will she wish to return so much once all her memories are returned to her?"

"Were I in her position, I would likely only wish to return all the more," Elrond answered, following the Wizard's gaze, and shaking his head ruefully. "Nienna's mercy, I would spare her the pain that is to come if only I could. I would take it upon myself a hundred times…"

"Were that only possible, my friend, but you can watch and trust in her until that time comes," Gandalf said in somber reply, then he paused and thought for a moment, another niggling little question rising to the top of his thoughts. "She calls herself by a different name now, does she not?"

A smile split the Lord of Rivendell's features again. A real, bright smile this time, and as he did, for just a moment, he looked not like one of the Eldar, but more akin to a Man. Mortal, transient, and yet unfalteringly hopeful in the face of the unknown — just as he might have been, once upon a time, had he only Chosen differently all those years ago.

Just as Elros once had.

"She does. The name she wore as a mortal woman of a mere twenty-two years," he confirmed, that little spark of defiant light that he shared with his apprentice coming back into his eyes.

"Eleanor Lucy Dace."

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 **A/N: Troll? Me? Surely not. XD**

 **Don't say I didn't want you about the cryptic riddles. For those of you conspiracy theorists out there, this should give you a good chunk of material to work with — and maybe even add to some of the theories you've been telling me! (Keep them coming btw, I live and breath mysteries and theories.)**

 **Really hope you enjoyed the peek at the situation from Gandalf and Elrond's perspective. And remember: if you manage to figure out who they are, please don't give the game away! There are some readers who don't want to be spoiled in the reviews or comments! If you want to let me know you've figured it out, drop me a PM!**

 **Much love,**

 **Rella x**


	3. Book 2 : Chapter 14 (Gimli POV)

**31 / 7 / 18 ~ In which a dwarf witnesses a friend's pain.**

 **Disclaimer:** "The Lord of the Rings" is the property of J. R. R. Tolkien. I only claim ownership over Eleanor Dace, Rávamë (aka "Tink"), and the subsequent plot of their story.

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 **A/N: Ok so I was kind of hoping to have the next main chapter of CM out before this side chapter. But honestly I had so many people in the reviews/comments saying how badly they wanted to see Legolas and Co.s reaction to Aragorn and Ellie's cliffhanger, I kind of had to write this.**

 **So with that in mind, please enjoy this gratuitous angst-fest of a side chapter, in which Gimli, Boromir, and our favourite elven princeling learn exactly what happened to their two companions during the Warg Attack…**

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 **Here They Fell**

Book 2 : Chapter 14.1

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Gimli had never encountered a fight he didn't relish.

Whether he enjoyed the battle or not, something in him had never strayed from the belief that each battle had a purpose. A meaning. A whetstone upon which his skills and temper were ever being sharpened.

Only two fights had ever come close to causing him true regret.

The first was the Fellowship's battle in Balin's tomb. The second, the warg riders' attack on the Rohan refugees.

Though it wasn't until the fighting was over that he would know it.

The dwarf slammed his primary battle axe down on the neck of a dying warg, putting the groaning beast out of its misery. The weak sound of its final whimper made him wince beneath his helm. Though he'd never admit it, he had always had something of a secret soft spot for untamed animals and creatures of the wilds — something his father had found both frustrating and amusing in his youth. But these things…

Whatever they had been before, their orc masters had long since twisted them beyond any hope of repair.

"Poor wretches," he muttered, yanking the axe out of the beast's corpse with little effort. It was still near pitch dark on the battlefield, the only light sources coming as the surviving soldiers relit their torches and they picked their way through the carnage. They had lost many, but not as many as he'd feared. Enough to get them safely to Helm's Deep at least. And although he couldn't immediately see them, he was at least certain without a doubt that one of their number had survived.

And likely without a single blond hair out of place either.

"Legolas!" Gimli boomed into the gloom. "Nineteen!"

Barely two seconds later came the elf's reply. "Twenty-two!"

"Bah!" he grumbled, following the echo of his companion's voice through the dark until he found him, Boromir, and Theoden's lieutenant Gamling all dispatching a few remaining semi-dead orcs. "A few lucky shots early in with that bow, princeling. That's all that saved you."

"If telling yourself that comforts you, my friend," Legolas answered with a small smile, rising from cleaning one of his blades on the grass.

Gimli was no connoisseur of emotions, but even he could tell the smile the elf offered was wooden and forced. Not even the good fight they'd just won, or their impromptu friendly contest of kill tallies had managed to draw the lingering hurt and conflict from his expression.

 _'Still sulking over the lass,'_ he thought grimly. Honestly, given what was going on around them, he was having trouble understanding why the pair couldn't just speak their minds freely to each other. By now any Dwarven couple would have done so, likely kicked the stuffing out of one another for a bit, and then promptly made up again.

 _'Mahal-damned Elves, I swear. More years in them than sense.'_

Gimli was half tempted to launch straight into a similar lecture he'd given the girl in question earlier, but was saved from that bad decision by King Theoden striding into their clearing. The left side of his face was smattered in black orc blood, and there was a nasty looking tear in his left sleeve from a stray warg fang, though he hardly seemed to notice.

"How many dead?" he demanded of them.

"Two dozen at least by my count," Boromir answered. "Though there are likely more unaccounted for."

Gamling nodded in agreement, grimly adding, "We also lost Háma."

Theoden's steadfast expression cracked a little at the revelation of his dead captain, but he quickly closed his eyes, and nodded once in acceptance.

"I see. A blessing then, that their sacrifice meant we did not lose more."

Gamling murmured a halfhearted agreement, but neither Gimli or his fellows joined, Boromir and Legolas both openly frowning. They all knew damned well their numbers were stretched thin enough. Even holed up behind the thick walls of Helm's Deep, they would be hard pressed to defend the people inside with barely a handful of men who could lift weapons, let alone knew how to use them.

Theoden glanced around at them all, his own frown suddenly deepening.

"Where's the ranger?"

Gimli blinked. He had been so caught up in the aftermath of the battle and his fool of an elf companion's wallowing that he'd barely noticed Aragorn's absence.

Legolas was instantly scanning around wildly in the dark with his hypersensitive eyes, searching for any clue to the ranger's whereabouts. Boromir too wasted no time in marching straight to where they'd seen him last — near the edge of a rocky cliff where Gimli remembered him shouting at someone he hadn't quite been able to see.

"Aragorn!" Legolas shouted into the dark, a worried note the dwarf had seldom heard creeping into his voice.

When there was no answer, Boromir and Gimli both joined.

"Aragorn?!"

This time, there was a reply.

Wet, cackling laughter from the dark only a few feet away.

"Deaaad," the strained voice sang gleefully. All three of them automatically raised their respective weapons in response to the voice, but quickly relaxed again when it became clear where (or rather what) the sound had come from.

An orc rider lay prone on its back in the mangled grass, weaponless, half beaten into the ground, its empty claws clutched to its midsection. A short bladed knife had been sunk to the hilt into its chest, just below its diaphragm. A good, strong blow, whomever had made it. A killing blow. And judging by the amount of blackened blood leaking between its fingers, the laughing monster wasn't going to remain long in this world.

Just long enough.

Enslaved, twisted beasts with no autonomy of their own was one thing for Gimli to pity. Orcs were a different story. Anything that could actively choose this kind of malice and cruelty was different. Flanked by the Man and Elf both, Gimli brought his axe blade to the side of the orc's neck, pressing just enough for the creature to feel its bite.

"Tell me what happened and I will speed your passing."

The monster's already twisted face contorted into a wicked smile up at them, made all the more hideous by the sadistic joy in it.

"He's d-dead," it chortled, blood bubbling behind its teeth. "Theeey both a-are."

Something deep in Gimli's gut began to writhe in trepidation. An instinct he had long since learned to ignore at his peril. Turning to Legolas and Boromir he saw the same instinct growing in their expressions too.

"Both?" Boromir demanded past his own glare.

The orc coughed hard, black blood spattering down the front of its ruined armour. It was still grinning.

"The manling scum, and the little she-elf. They took a l-little tumble over the cliff."

The twisting feeling in Gimli's gut grew icy teeth. For a split second he and Boromir both could do nothing but look wide-eyed at each other. But Legolas, who had been standing rigid and frozen with anger, blurred forward and seized the cackling creature by its collar. The elf all but wrenched the orc halfway off the ground until they were almost face to face.

"You lie." His voice was perfectly, dangerously calm on the surface, but Gimli could see his knuckles bloodlessly white on the creature's jerkin, suppressed wrath roiling off him like smoke.

"See my eyes! Feel my pulse beat, Firstborn," the orc spat up at him. "You know I speak true!"

Legolas didn't immediately react as Gimli and Boromir watched him, baffled by the orc's choice of words. Then Gimli noticed the back of the elf's finger pressed into the orc's neck, right against its pulse-point, his pale eyes fixed with unsettling intensity dead on the creature's blackened ones.

Then slowly confusion and denial began to creep into the lines of Legolas' face. His gaze drifted down, as if lost, as his grip began to slacken, and with a jolt that Gimli swore he felt as well, the elf's eyes suddenly locked onto the blade lodged just under the chuckling monster's heart.

He looked as if someone had just buried a blade to the hilt in his own chest.

"Elbereth Gilthoniel… ***** " he choked suddenly, almost too quiet to hear.

For a moment Gimli couldn't understand what had pulled the unsettling reaction from his pointy-eared companion. But then he had the presence of mind to look closely at the knife lodged so deeply in the orc's chest, squinting through the dim light cast by the torchlight.

Finally he saw it.

The familiar handle, with its eight little words carved clumsily into the wood.

Words now stained with both black and red blood.

 _Oh, Mahal…_

"No," Boromir insisted, shaking his head in stunned disbelief. "No, that's impossible! I left her with the other women! I saw her! How could she have…?"

He trailed off into the silence that followed, but Gimli wasn't listening by then. He was too busy looking to the hunched form of the elf beside him. He'd gone as still and silent as the void between the stars, the icy fury dimming within his eyes to frozen denial as Gimli looked at him.

Because it was the lass' knife buried in that monster's gut.

Which, Gimli realised with mounting despair, meant that the figure he'd seen Aragorn shouting at before Gilmi had lost sight of them — it had to have been—

"Ooooh. Was she yours?" the orc's face had lit with sudden glee, baring black, bloody teeth up at the frighteningly silent elf. When Legolas said nothing, barely even seeming to draw breath, the orc howled with mocking laughter. "She waaas, wasn't she!"

Legolas let the orc fall back to the grass, rising slowly to his feet, before soundlessly turning and moving away towards the cliff. The same cliff that the orc had said Aragorn and the lass had…

Boromir cursed, growling something about it being untrue, that they could trust no a word from such a creature, before also turning to begin to search the darkened battlefield for any sign of their lost companions. Perhaps it was a foolish, but Gimli silently prayed neither wouldn't find the bodies. At least then there was still hope.

Even if it was only a fool's hope.

Yet even as he thought the words, his memory reminded him of what he'd heard the lass say back in Edoras. They'd all heard the story she'd told them. Heard the heartbreak in her voice when she'd spoken of her home. They each knew there was only way she would have parted from that blade now.

If she'd been unable to fight back.

And if Aragorn had been unable to save her.

"Your she-elf's gone down to the daaark," the orc began to laugh in a gurgling sing-song voice, manic gaze still fixed on the retreating elf's back. "Your sweet lady's gone to the deep. Poor little thing, neck so slender and thin. Your she-elf's gone down to th—"

 _Crack._

Without any warning, Gimli struck the creature square across the face with the pommel of his axe.

Truly, he hadn't meant the blow to be quite so hard, but the sudden burst of searing rage had caught him off guard. The strike snapped the orc's head sideways so fast that its neck broke with a wet snap, its mocking song abruptly cut off.

Not fast enough.

When Gimli looked up again, past the red fury creeping into his vision, he found his friend at the cliff's edge, looking straight down into the distant, murky waters — and for a truly terrible second, Gimli thought he was preparing to jump down after them. Still he made no sound, barely even seeming to move in the strengthening wind. But the line of his shoulders was as taught as the string of his bow, as if he were preparing for a blow that might well kill him should it land.

Gimli's fury broke over the sight, mixing with the building grief and denial to form a lingering pain in his own chest. A pain he knew only too well would never truly leave. Him or his remaining friend.

The word surprised him as easily as it had come.

Since when had he begun to think of the elf as a _friend_?

Since right now, he supposed, considering it. Only a true friend could have garnered that kind of outrage from any dwarf, let alone the desire to do whatever he could to try and ease his companion's pain.

And by Mahal, he was in pain.

Even Gimli could see it past the blank facade he wore now — all trace of the conflict or anger from before gone entirely.

Crouching over the body of the dead orc, he carefully yanked the lass' knife free, being cautious not to damage it as he cleaned it on the grass. Then as quietly as his sturdy frame would allow, he moved to join the elf at the cliff face. Neither of them spoke for several long minutes as they stared down into the dark river far below. The fall was a sheer one, straight down to the cold water. Between rocks that jutted from the black surface, white rapids gnashed and churned in an unending roar that echoed viciously up at them.

"They might yet live," Gimli heard himself saying aloud, and had to fight not to wince at the doubtful note in his own voice. "Aragorn isn't one to fall so easily, and the lass…"

He couldn't make himself finish at the look on Legolas' face. The elf's already white-knuckled fists had abruptly tightened until he swore he could hear the bones creak beneath the strain.

Theoden and the few men who'd survived the battle found them moments later — shaken and pale-faced in the wake of so many losses.

"Get the wounded on horses. Any able survivors will have to walk," the king ordered the smattering of men around them. With a pained but pointed look at Legolas, he added, "Leave the dead."

Legolas didn't move or even to turn an acknowledge the king's words, but Gimli had enough presence of mind to narrow his eyes at him. He knew he couldn't well argue, insist that it was not _their_ dead he was ordering them to leave behind. But that didn't mean he had to show his consent, or leave his suffering companion's side. Theoden might not have been a Dwarf, but he had the understanding of one in that moment. The king stared down at Gimli for a long moment before his gaze softened, and he gave a simple nod of acceptance.

"We must make haste to catch up with the women and children. They will not be safe on their own for long," he said quietly, clapping a consoling hand once on the dwarf's broad shoulder. "Follow when you are ready."

And with that, he turned to the remaining men behind him, guiding them back towards their original path.

Grateful as he was for the king's courtesy, the dwarf warrior found himself without words when he turned back to the elf at his side. He'd never really been good with words, let alone ones of comfort. That had always been Ori's forte more than his.

The fresh loss of Aragorn and Eleanor both, compounded with the memory of the older dwarf who had once been such a close friend cut into him like knives. A friend whose long dead body still remained trapped beneath the Misty Mountains, deep in the depths of Balin's tomb, clutching the tomes he'd loved so much in life even in death. No, he'd never been a master of words as Ori had once been, and never would be. So he did the only thing he could think to — what he silently wished someone had done for him, back when that particular wound had been so fresh and crippling.

He placed a hand on Legolas' shoulder.

And to his surprise, he didn't flinch away.

"Are you well, lad?"

For what felt like the longest time imaginable, Legolas said nothing at all. Not moving, not speaking, and barely seeming to even breathe. Then finally, he drew a single deep breath, his jaw tight against the pain he was refusing even now to show.

"No…" he murmured in answer, barely above a whisper as he finally turned away from the cliff. "But my thanks for asking, Gimli."

* * *

 **Translations:**

 ***** **"Elbereth who lit the stars…"** — The closest equivalent to a swear by a god (Sindarin)

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 **A/N: I genuinely can't decide if that was too heavy on the melodrama or not, but in the end this is the scene that has been sitting in the back of my mind for months now — so I had to get it off my chest. XD I guess y'all will let me know what you thought in the reviews.**

 **Either way I do hope you enjoyed this little peek into the happenings outside Ellie's POV, and thanks again for being so patient with me on these slow updates. They might be slow, but they are still coming, and your continued support means the world to me. See you all in the next chapter of CM!**

 **Much love,**

 **Rella xx**


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